Everyone agreed and began helping themselves to slices of bread. Then, to his surprise, they started passing the jar of strawberry jam he’d made around the table. The meat sat there, as they all slathered jam on slices of the still-warm bread, and then took huge bites, offering him congratulations on what was apparently delicious jam.
As Cassandra took a bite of her own bread, her happy gaze locked onto his, he felt rather than scented her joy. He’d learned to rely on his sense of smell for everything, but for once it was nice to take a step back and feel something instead.
And the longer he stared at Cassandra, the more he felt.
It was like his chest was swelling as emotion built up there. It was the strangest feeling, he had no idea emotion could be experienced in this way. But those feelings lodged there, and they weren't unpleasant. There was warmth to them, echoed by the laughing, chattering voices of his team as they enjoyed the meal.
Only he and Cassandra remained quiet. But it was a nice quiet, a connected quiet, one they shared amidst the hustle and bustle of what was happening around them. Their gazes remained locked, and he felt no desire to let it go.
His darkness needed her light, and now that he’d taken that plunge, he was determined to do whatever it took to ease the doubts Cassandra had about him and make her his.
January 7th
7:00 A.M.
As she padded barefoot down through the corridors of the mansion, Cassandra felt more like her old self than she had in months.
Learning how she’d been conceived had rocked her foundation so badly that she’d started to feel like she could never go back to the bright and bubbly young woman she’d been before.
But last night something had shifted.
Baking bread in the kitchen with Dragon had been exactly what she needed. It reminded her that even though her life felt rocky right now, there were still things she could cling to. Happy memories from her past, old hobbies she had neglected for far too long. A man who had laid himself bare before her.
Dragon was trying, he was making an effort to open himself up to her. Sharing not just details on what had happened to him and his team, but about his family and what his life had been like as a child, was a big step for him, and she knew it, respected it, and felt a little more for him because he’d done it.
It was also bittersweet.
Because beneath the words he’d given her were the ones he hadn't. She saw it in the way he looked at her, though. He looked at her like he was trapped in the dark, and she was a ray of light that would lead him out.
What happened when he learned that she had her own darkness?
That she wanted to join him sometimes in the darkness.
Just because she had chosen not to follow in her parents’ footsteps and head into some kind of military service didn't mean that she was darkness-free. She just liked her darkness contained in one particular area of her life, one that she could control, that could satiate her needs and leave her free to spend the rest of her time in the lighter parts of the world.
When Dragon looked at her, he saw spun glass. Something he had to be careful with, treat like it was breakable. But she wasn't breakable, and if they ever took their budding relationship to the next level, she didn't want to be treated like some porcelain doll that could shatter if he wasn't careful.
She was pretty sure Dragon would freak out more than all her brothers combined if they ever found out that while she was in college, she had frequented an on-campus group that participated in rough sex. The kind where you tied each other up and inflicted a little pain along with a whole bunch of orgasms.
It was the wildest thing she’d ever done, and back then she hadn't quite grasped the consequences of what she was doing. It wasn't until she dated a guy she met through someone she’d known in the club after she’d graduated that she realized the potential dangers of the kind of rough, dark, dirty sex she craved with someone she couldn’t one hundred percent trust.
That particular lesson had left behind a few scars when the guy had neglected proper aftercare, and she’d realized that she either had to lock away her dark fantasies or find someone she could trust her body with.
Dragon was that man.
Part of her had known that from the second she first laid eyes on him. The darkness inside him called out to the darkness inside her, and she’d wanted so badly for him to see pasteverything else, the perceptions everybody else had of her, and just see … her.
But he hadn't.
Maybe more of the blame for that fell on her shoulders, though, because she’d been so busy just trying to survive. To figure out how her paternity changed her so she could discover who she was going forward and what she wanted.
When she reached the conservatory at the back of the house, where she’d done yoga every morning she’d spent there other than the day before, and that was only because she’d slept until after noon, she came to an abrupt stop.
The room wasn't empty as she’d been expecting.
Dragon was standing in the thin, first rays of dawn shining through the glass walls. He was wearing nothing but a pair of gray sweatpants that hung low on his hips and nothing else, giving her a perfect view of all that delicious, tanned skin and perfectly defined muscles.
Darn, he was droolworthy.
